research-article

Is this app safe?: a large scale study on application permissions and risk signals

Authors:

Yusuke Yamamoto,

N. AsokanAuthors Info & Claims

WWW '12: Proceedings of the 21st international conference on World Wide Web

Pages 311 - 320

https://doi.org/10.1145/2187836.2187879

Published: 16 April 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Third-party applications (apps) drive the attractiveness of web and mobile application platforms. Many of these platforms adopt a decentralized control strategy, relying on explicit user consent for granting permissions that the apps request. Users have to rely primarily on community ratings as the signals to identify the potentially harmful and inappropriate apps even though community ratings typically reflect opinions about perceived functionality or performance rather than about risks. With the arrival of HTML5 web apps, such user-consent permission systems will become more widespread. We study the effectiveness of user-consent permission systems through a large scale data collection of Facebook apps, Chrome extensions and Android apps. Our analysis confirms that the current forms of community ratings used in app markets today are not reliable indicators of privacy risks of an app. We find some evidence indicating attempts to mislead or entice users into granting permissions: free applications and applications with mature content request more permissions than is typical; 'look-alike' applications which have names similar to popular applications also request more permissions than is typical. We also find that across all three platforms popular applications request more permissions than average.

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Cited By

Liao SCheng LLuo XSong ZCai HYao DHu HLuo BLiao XXu JKirda ELie D(2024)A First Look at Security and Privacy Risks in the RapidAPI EcosystemProceedings of the 2024 on ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3658644.3690294(1626-1640)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3658644.3690294
Stegman JTrottier PHillier CKhan HMannan MCalandrino JTroncoso C(2023)"My privacy for their security"Proceedings of the 32nd USENIX Conference on Security Symposium10.5555/3620237.3620438(3583-3600)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3620237.3620438
Nomoto KWatanabe TShioji EAkiyama MMori T(2023)Understanding the Inconsistencies in the Permissions Mechanism of Web BrowsersJournal of Information Processing10.2197/ipsjjip.31.62031(620-642)Online publication date: 2023
https://doi.org/10.2197/ipsjjip.31.620
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Index Terms

Is this app safe?: a large scale study on application permissions and risk signals
1. Human-centered computing
2. Security and privacy
  1. Security services
    1. Access control
  2. Systems security
    1. Operating systems security

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Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

WWW '12: Proceedings of the 21st international conference on World Wide Web

April 2012

1078 pages

ISBN:9781450312295

DOI:10.1145/2187836

General Chairs:
Alain Mille
Université de Lyon, France
,
Fabien Gandon
INRIA, France
,
Jacques Misselis
HP, France
,
Program Chairs:
Michael Rabinovich
Case Western Reserve University, USA
,
Steffen Staab
University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Univ. de Lyon: Universite de Lyon

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SIGWEB: ACM Special Interest Group on Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Web

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 16 April 2012

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WWW 2012

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Univ. de Lyon

WWW 2012: 21st World Wide Web Conference 2012

April 16 - 20, 2012

Lyon, France

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Overall Acceptance Rate 1,899 of 8,196 submissions, 23%

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Cited By

Liao SCheng LLuo XSong ZCai HYao DHu HLuo BLiao XXu JKirda ELie D(2024)A First Look at Security and Privacy Risks in the RapidAPI EcosystemProceedings of the 2024 on ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3658644.3690294(1626-1640)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3658644.3690294
Stegman JTrottier PHillier CKhan HMannan MCalandrino JTroncoso C(2023)"My privacy for their security"Proceedings of the 32nd USENIX Conference on Security Symposium10.5555/3620237.3620438(3583-3600)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3620237.3620438
Nomoto KWatanabe TShioji EAkiyama MMori T(2023)Understanding the Inconsistencies in the Permissions Mechanism of Web BrowsersJournal of Information Processing10.2197/ipsjjip.31.62031(620-642)Online publication date: 2023
https://doi.org/10.2197/ipsjjip.31.620
Gao CLi YQi SLiu YWang XZheng ZLiao Q(2023)Listening to Users' Voice: Automatic Summarization of Helpful App ReviewsIEEE Transactions on Reliability10.1109/TR.2022.321756672:4(1619-1631)Online publication date: Dec-2023
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Tam CBalau MOliveira T(2023)What Influences People’s Adoption of Cognitive Cybersecurity?International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2023.227941140:23(8295-8312)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2023
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Jean CLefrere V(2023)Use of Personal Data for Monetization Purposes: The Case of Mobile ApplicationsJournal of Economic Issues10.1080/00213624.2023.227312857:4(1095-1102)Online publication date: 14-Dec-2023
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Lavranou R(2023)Predicting Privacy Decisions in Mobile Applications and Raising Users’ Privacy AwarenessResearch Challenges in Information Science: Information Science and the Connected World10.1007/978-3-031-33080-3_48(651-660)Online publication date: 23-May-2023
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Wyss EWittman ADavidson DDe Carli LSuga YSakurai KDing XSako K(2022)Wolf at the DoorProceedings of the 2022 ACM on Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3488932.3523262(1139-1153)Online publication date: 30-May-2022
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Munyendo CAcar YAviv A(2022)“Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures”: User Concerns with Mobile Loan Apps in Kenya2022 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP)10.1109/SP46214.2022.9833779(2304-2319)Online publication date: May-2022
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